Smart posters are billboards or posters displayed in a public area equipped with a unique contactless near field communications (NFC) tag, typically a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag, embedded in them. The NFC tag allows a customer to place a mobile device, for example a mobile telephone, adjacent to a touchpoint within the poster that is associated with the tag in order to engage with the advertised product. Typical methods of engagement with the advertised products include connecting to a website associated with the product where the customer can purchase the advertised product, gain extra information about the product. Engaging with the NFC tag may also register the customer's mobile device for reception of short message service (SMS) text message alerts associated with the product. Smart posters simplify customer interaction with the advertised product by removing the need for the customer to manually record or enter a promotional code into their mobile device. Smart posters also increase the potential for viral marketing as information downloaded from a smart poster can be easily transferred between mobile devices.
Tampering with smart posters, for example the replacement of the legitimate NFC tag with a spurious NFC tag, raises a number of security issues. For example, a user could be directed to a site where malicious code is downloaded on to the user's mobile device. Physical damage, for example vandalism, to the poster can lead to the NFC tag being damaged with the consequence that customers cannot obtain the information stored on the NFC tag. Currently, the status of NFC tags can be monitored only by the manual inspection of each poster.
Errors in the data loaded onto NFC tags can lead to customers being unable to obtain the information about the advertised products, or to customers being directed to incorrect websites. Currently, the correction of such errors in NFC tag programming requires the physical replacement of all NFC tags that are incorrectly programmed.
Usage data detailing the number of times that the data stored on the NFC tag is downloaded would be of use in analyzing the effectiveness of an advertising campaign, for example to establish the most effective geographical location for a given campaign, or over a series of campaigns. Currently, there is no system whereby this information can be obtained.